The Universal Short Title Catalogue 1450-1650

The invention of printing was one of the crucial technological milestones in the creation of modern European society. It facilitated the generalisation of reading, the dissemination of scientific knowledge, the creation of an information society and the growth of public opinion.

The Universal Short Title Catalogue is the first comprehensive survey of all books published in the period 1450-1650: the first two hundred years after the invention of printing. It will present, in a searchable database accessible free to all users, data on over 700,000 editions published in more than 20 languages. It will provide the locations of over 3.5 million surviving copies in some 6,000 libraries and archives. Crucially the database will also provide links to the many thousands of editions made available by recent digitisation projects. Instead of having to locate and then travel to see these very rare texts, users will be able to access them from their desktop.

The USTC will be an indispensable resource, and the first port of call, for all those interested in the history, literature, religion and culture of this period of European history. By gathering together information on all of Europe's printed books in one place, the USTC will bring to light previously unrecognised phenomena, such as the flow of text across national and linguistic boundaries, or the trans-national popularity of particular works or authors. A unique system of subject coding will allow users to search for all works of particular genres wherever they were published in Europe: the power and ease of these searches will facilitate any number of particular studies in the fields of literature, science and political writing.

The USTC documents the printed book in the first two centuries after the introduction of the new technology of mechanical book production: the last great media transformation before our own electronic age. In the first years the experimental technology was carried along on a wave of enthusiasm: but for the most part the books published in the first decades were texts familiar from the manuscript book world of the late mediaeval period. It was only in the sixteenth century that publishers began to experiment with new types of books for new classes of readers, offering a vastly expanded range of literature, practical handbooks, religious and political works. The early seventeenth century witnessed a further huge growth in pamphlet literature, stimulated by the great conflicts of the age: the Fronde, the Thirty Years' War, and the English Civil War. The early seventeenth century also saw the first experiments with periodical newssheets, adapting and reshaping an already buoyant market for news, entertainment and sensation.

Many of the new genres of print were small ephemeral publications with an extremely low rate of survival. A high proportion of the books, pamphlets and broadsheets registered in the USTC are documented in only one located copy. Bringing together information on these unique items, scattered among libraries and archives around the world, has only become possible thanks to the transformation of resources in the new digital age, as libraries move towards the publication of on-line catalogues. The USTC team in St Andrews had developed new methodologies to capture, sieve and analyse this electronic data, moving to completion a project that in an earlier era would have scarcely been possible. When complete, the USTC will allow us for the first time to appreciate and study the full richness of this diverse, dynamic world of print: and its impact on society.

The USTC will focus wide public interest of one of the cornerstones of the European cultural heritage: the invention of printing. It will broaden awareness of the surviving artefacts and provide access to the texts.

Beneficiaries

The USTC will be a free access resource, available for all with a professional or recreational interest in rare books, and the process of media transformation in the first age of print.

In the commercial sector the USTC will be of prime utility to two major groups: dealers in antiquarian books and publishers of digital texts. Publishers of digital texts will have the opportunity to attach their images to the USTC records for retail sale. The USTC has already entered into agreements with two major publishers, IDC/ Brill and Proquest for the marketing of their products through the USTC.

This service will also be extended to antiquarian booksellers. For booksellers the USTC will become the first point of reference for the identification and cataloguing of early printed material. It will replace a variety of standard works which currently provide extremely patchy coverage.

The public sector, third sector and policy makers

The USTC will be a critical resource and policy tool for all libraries, archives and galleries with early printed holdings.

It will highlight the importance of print to the European cultural heritage, and assist in making the case to policy makers for conservation resources.

It will demonstrate the potential for cross-institutional co-operation, through virtual exhibitions of the sort to be piloted by the USTC with Scottish libraries in November 2011.

It will help libraries establish priorities for conservation, by documenting which of their holdings are especially rare. The USTC will be able to generate automatically lists of books known in only one or two surviving copies, and can circulate these to libraries as a conservation alert.

It will help direct scarce resources applied to digitization projects by making libraries aware which books are already digitized elsewhere.

Critical will be the understanding that the rarest items are not always the most celebrated books. Many small libraries and archives will turn out to have unique surviving pamphlets and broadsheets, many located far from their place of printing. These discoveries may be a crucial benefit to institutions struggling to explain the relevance and importance of their rare book holdings in a harsh funding climate.

The USTC also draws attention to the quantities of printed items which survive not in libraries but in other institutions, such as archives or galleries. This will encourage archives to make these items (often uncatalogued in folders of mostly manuscript material) a higher priority for systematic documentation.


Public benefit

The invention of printing was the last great media transformation before the current electronic age. But few beyond privileged specialists have the opportunity of direct contact with the books themselves. The USTC will bring the experience of early print to any who access its website, associated exhibitions or publications.

History is now a major part of the leisure industry in the United Kingdom. Much of this interest is focussed presently on two fields: family history, and the social history of recent times. The USTC offers the opportunity to introduce early book history to these established circles of those with a curiosity for the past.

The USTC can also contribute to the democratisation of learning. Traditionally scholars with access to the great research collections in Europe and the United States have enjoyed a significant advantage. Communities of scholars have congregated close to these collections, all of them in the world's richest countries. Remote access through the USTC will allow those working outside these fa